Goofball Jones

I was never a traditional comic book fan. I mean, I would would read a superhero comic from time to time while growing up, but they never grabbed me in any significant way. I was a lover of the printed word though, and I read books and short stories from a young age and that love continues to this day. I did have some love for the horror comic though, mainly the old EC Comics like Tales from the Crypt or Vault of Horror. I can’t remember exactly where or how I found these comics when I began reading them in the early 70’s, because they hadn’t been published since the 50’s. I can only suspect my older brother had gotten them somehow, and I’m glad he did. They didn’t center around the artwork of the comic but the content of the story they were telling. I mean, quite frankly the artwork in these magazines was pretty mundane, but the stories were anything but. It was my first lesson in substance over style. 

I still didn’t become a mainstream comic fan. The stories of the Hulk or the Amazing Spiderman still didn’t intrest me. The only comic magazine I bought on a regular basis was Mad, mainly because it was different and it had something to say. Sometime in the mid 70’s though I found in my brother’s stash of Playboys and Penthouses some Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers by Gilbert Shelton and a few Zap comics illustrated by R. Crumb, and that’s exactly what they did to me….they zapped my brain. Mixed in with my reading/education with the Playboys and the Penthouses was the wonderful world of the dirty and unhinged. The world of underground comics.

I gobbled up everything I could find by these artists and that’s how I remember reading them…not by the subjects, but by the artists. The drawings were great, but it was the content that grabbed me. They were so over-the-top it’s hard to describe in words. It’s just something you had to experience. I also became a fan of the erotic comic, which was like a story filled porn movie. Even when they were trying to titillate, they still had content of substance. They were still, for the most part, content driven. Near the end of the 70’s, while I was in a border school, I was introduced to Heavy Metal magazine and international artists such as Moebius and Druillet. Giger and Corben. I read every issue. Absorbed it. But looking back, I could tell it was starting to go from substance to style. The slick artwork seemed to take precedence over the story….and quite frankly, they were pretty thin stories. I didn’t notice it at the time, like a frog in a pot on the stove where the heat was slowly being turned up, I didn’t know anything was wrong until I was cooked. 

Style had taken over. And I suppose that’s okay in a way. The artwork is certainly nice to look at, and a talented artist can show a story from artwork alone, that is if they’re really gifted. But I wanted the whole package. I wanted excellent artwork and a compelling, intelligent story which would engage me like a novel or short story would.

That’s when I discovered American Splendor and Harvey Pekar.